Tangled
by ForeverRio
Summary: Craig's up late trying to finish his last chance at passing chemistry. Tweek never sleeps because the gnomes will get him. The formers so worried about his report he lets the latter fall into a panic attack-now how's he gonna fix it? Creek drabble.


Well if it isn't my first South Park fic! (Alright that's a complete lie I've wrote other SP fanficiton I just never bothered posting and/or finishing it. Kinda like with all my other stories.) But this is a stand alone Creek I thought some people might wanna actually read. I've self-edited it four times so I'm hoping I caught all my mistakes.

Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated! (Slaps a "Tell Me How I'm Writing" sticker down.)

Enjoy!

South Park is owned by my heros. Sadly, I'm not Trey Parker or Matt Stone. Dammit.

* * *

"Gnomes, gnomes, gnomes-"

"Tweek." Craig ground out, only slightly more annoyed than usual. "Shut up about the frickin' gnomes."

Tweek immediately squeaked and made some sort of apology. Not that anyone could understand said apology, for Tweek was far to nervous to say anything comprehendible. It made Craig flinch. He hated it when he was the cause of Tweek's panic. It was one of the few things in the world that alternately pissed Craig off then made him feel bad.

He didn't "feel bad" for anything.

Ever.

That emotion, regret, was reserved specifically for Tweek.

Right now though, Craig was a bit run down. He'd been up since five the previous mourning. The little digital clock Tweek had upon his desk read 3:04 am. He hadn't had sleep for a long time.

No sleep made for a cranky Craig.

"Sorry I shouldn't have snapped." Craig said, using a much softer tone. He was exhausted but that wasn't an excuse to frighten Tweek.

"N-no it was my-my fault!" Tweek immediately replied, which just made Craig feel worse. "I sho-shouldn't bother you about the g-g-gnomes!"

"It's fine Tweek. Yell if the gnomes actually show up, alright?" Craig sighed as Tweek nodded then twitched spastically. Though they were in the eleventh grade, Tweek was still obsessed with the underpant gnomes. Craig couldn't blame him, on many an occasion he'd actually seen the damned things himself.

He had thought he was high the first few times, but you can only see something once or twice while thinking you were high without knowing it. Otherwise you have to admit you have a problem, and since Craig didn't take drugs of any kind, he was forced to admit the gnomes existed.

Why they hounded Tweek Craig couldn't fathom.

Honestly Craig should've been happy Tweek was mentioning the gnomes. After they had graduated from elementary school, Tweek had given up completely on everyone else. The caffeine addict saw it as a one sided war. He, the only defense earth had, verses the evil of gnomes that stole everyone's undergarments. For some reason, one Craig never fully understood, he was excused from this exclusion.

He didn't know if Tweek had thought of him as Earth's back up defender (Craig laughed at that though) or if Tweek just couldn't keep it to himself, but Tweek never withheld gnome information from him. Wether Craig believed about the gnomes or not, Tweek told him everything.

It hadn't taken Craig long to figure out he was the only one Tweek mentioned anything of this sort to. It was heartening and a bit weird at the same time.

As the boys got older, Craig secretly began taking pride in that fact. He was Tweek's confident. While he screwed everyone else in South Park over, he would never betray Tweek. It had taken Craig a while to figure out why that was. Even though he had found his answer last year, when a panicked Tweek showed up at his door, Craig still didn't fully believe it.

In all honesty he was trying to squish it.

But love is a rather hard disease to kill.

Especially when you were so important to the person you secretly loved.

Craig didn't actually know if he was important to Tweek, he just assumed. Or hoped. Whichever you preferred. Tweek acted like it. Craig went with it.

However, it caused quite a few problems with the later.

Like right now. Currently Craig was crashing at Tweek's place. Both his mother and sister were on there periods, making home rather deadly.

Craig didn't think he'd be welcomed back either. Not unless he was bearing chocolate or girly movies.

So he crashed at Tweek's place. There were times when Craig wished this didn't happen so often. The simple truth was, he over at Tweek's house so much his cloths had permanently become apart of Tweek's closet. Tweek's parents gradually accepted the existence of there 'adopted' son. Truthfully Craig thought Tweek's parents were awesome, excluding their horrible jokes that usually caused Tweek never ending panic attacks.

It Tweek didn't depend so much on caffeine, Craig honestly thought he would've taken the blonde off of it. It certainly didn't help things.

Speaking of things, he needed to finish this report. He had to. He didn't have a choice in the matter. His chemistry teacher had flat out told him he was going to fail the course-again-if he didn't write four detailed lab conclusions by the end of the week. Which was exactly what Craig had been doing for the last two days.

Angrily Craig flipped his paper the bird.

Fortunately, Tweek was an insomniac. Thus he wasn't intruding on anyone's sleep.

"Gnomes, gnomes, gnomes, gnomes."

Craig gave an audible sigh. He didn't want to cause further panic. Carefully wrapping his middle finger around his pencil, he set back to work. Figuring if he could distract it enough, his middle finger would lose it's need to flip Tweek off.

It worked. It worked so well Craig became engrossed in his final report. He didn't notice the clock strike 3:30 am.

So Tweek's sudden shrieking of "Craig! C-Craig! _Craig!_" startled the teen so badly he nearly flipped his chair over.

"What?!" He yelled, gripping the desk so the chair didn't launch backwards. When he was sure the it was steady, he spun around flipping off anything and everything.

Tweek wasn't paying attention. "There! Don't you see them!" The blonde was hysteric, pulling at his hair with one hand while pointing wildly at his drawers with the other. Craig looked, but saw nothing.

"No, I don't see them." He grumped. His report was almost finished dammit.

"The gnomes! The gnomes were here! Craig!"

Craig sighed. Tweek was Past The Point Of No Return. It was a term Craig had coined himself-one that seemed to stick with the blonde's family. Tweek was paranoid, he threw little fits everyday. However, he rarely came Past The Point Of No Return. It was a state that reflected it's name. Tweek would be so far gone with his paranoia or fears that he wouldn't be able to calm down. Any attempt to do so only added to the problem.

Normally Craig was the best person suited to handle this problem. He was the only person in South Park-probubly the world-who was used to, and trained in, the art of calming Tweek down. Normally he could do it in minutes. This was not a normal panic attack. It was going to take Craig a while to reverse this one.

That pissed him off.

He couldn't blame anyone but himself though. He should've known leaving Tweek alone in the midst of a gnome panic attack while staying up with the blonde would've caused him to go over the edge. Normally Craig was more insightful. He was too tired though. He hadn't been thinking.

Craig innerly cursed himself.

He couldn't deal with this right now. He had a report to finish.

Which was in all actuality a complete lie. Craig could very well deal with this.

_That_ pissed him off even more.

Flashing doubles at the gnomes, (both hands gladly supplied their middle fingers in flipping off everything in Craig's vision, because he couldn't actually_ see_ said gnomes.) Craig abandoned his report. Slowly he made his way over to Tweek.

As Craig dropped down to Tweek's side, the latter flashed him a panicked glance. "They're going to get me! I-I know i-i-it!" He was twitching far worse than usual. His shirt had managed to come completely unbuttoned. Craig happily eyed the shaking chest before realizing what he was doing.

Tweek's blonde hair was in a far worse state than usual. For once there was no coffee in sight. Craig cursed himself for letting his friend fall into this condition.

"Tweek." He said gently.

Tweek let out a panicked "Ah!" in response.

"Tweek." Craig moved closer. Close enough that both his and Tweek's shoulders touched. Touching was a key part in bringing Tweek out of it, another important fact Craig had learned.

"They-they're gonna eat me!" Tweek's eyes were glued to the drawer, undoubtably following invisible gnomes that had long since gone.

"No they're not." Craig gently grabbed Tweek's chin, forcing the blonde to look at him. "The gnomes aren't going to get you Tweek."

Tweek gulped but kept his chin in Craig's hand. His panicky eyes searched Craig's tired ones. "How d-do you know?" He asked.

Craig let a soft smile slide onto his usually angry face. "Because I'm here. Those gnomes won't do a damn thing to you while I'm around Tweek. I'd kick there asses."

Tweek stopped shaking. Craig blinked at him. His mind happily repeated what he'd just said.

Craig blanched. He hadn't meant for it to come out like that! It was too much, now Tweek was going to panic, then reject him, then leave him in the dust!

The irony was that Craig was the one that was panicking while Tweek appeared to be calm was lost on the former. He suddenly understood Tweek's need to pull at his hair.

But Tweek didn't do any of that. Instead, he threw himself at Craig, wrapping his shaking limbs around the elder teen's frame. His head burrowed itself in Craig's chest.

Craig didn't react at first. A second later he surprised himself by wrapping his own arms around Tweek's shaking body.

He hadn't thought he was in control of his limbs just then.

Slowly- determined not to ruin this moment-Craig dropped his chin on top of Tweek's head.

They stayed like that. Stayed until they both eventually fell asleep, on the floor, entangled in one another.

From then on out, whenever Craig slept over at Tweek's house that's how they fell asleep. If caught, Craig would immediately respond he was simply defending Tweek from the gnomes, then flip you off. If cornered on the subject, Tweek would panic then screech something unintelligible about pressure. But neither stopped doing it.

Not even when Token and Clyde found out.

They never would, either. It became so usual that the two eventually found themselves entangled with each other for the rest of their lives.

Entangled with no way (or need) of escape.

* * *

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